We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elm Hernandez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Elm, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Cosplaying has always been a self taught craft for the longest time. It wasn’t until the most recent years that Cosplay really took off and all sorts of people started creating tutorials. I started cosplaying back in 2010 when really the only way to teach yourself was using low resolution pictures on Pinterest and hopefully understanding their usual very broken English explanations. Eventually I just started experimenting with anything I could get my hands on.
I would wrap myself in duct tape to make my clothing patterns and I would buy those huge sketch pads to draw out my blueprints for props.
It wasn’t until I was in about my Junior and Senior year of Highschool that I learned how to use AutoCAD to make my blueprints. Though, the duct tape method still proved to be the best method for clothes.
There’s plenty of skills I’ve learned that help me every time I make a new cosplay but I will say probably the most helpful one was learning contact cement is the holy grail of glue for foam builds. Truly wouldn’t have been able to make some of my props as strong as they are without it.
The only aspect of my life that really prevents me from learning more is that cosplay is extremely hard to make your full time job so the minute I graduated College I couldn’t work on cosplay as much anymore. Making six projects in a summer dropped down to maybe one or two. Of course, sacrifices have to be made when you’re a real adult.

Elm, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Elm, or Elm The Witch on most social medias. I started cosplaying when I was around ten years old. I attended my first ever convention in 2011 in Lansing Michigan called Shuto Con. I’m now twenty-two years old and I know that little ten year old would be so proud of where we’ve gone in life with our little nerdy hobby. I watched my first ever anime called Soul Eater and really, that’s what got me into all of this. One of my childhood friends asked me if I had ever heard of cosplaying and was wondering if I would want to join her in a Soul Eater group. I ended up making my very own Maka Albarn cosplay with the help of my wonderful mother. It wasn’t perfect in any way but it was perfect to me. From there forward I strived for accuracy in my cosplays. I spent hours or even days studying every inch of a character to make the perfect copy.
Now that I’ve grown in my skills I mostly make props for myself and friends. Starting 2023 I want to start taking commissions for all sorts of props, armor and other hard parts of a cosplay.
I’m so proud of how far I’ve come and how I can now make my own props, glow, move and smoke.
My most recent project, Jinx from Arcane; has fully moving parts in her machine gun. Not to mention, I made sure her rocket launcher could smoke and light up. I couldn’t be more proud of how I’ve grown in my favorite hobby.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

As I stated prior, at the beginning of this all there weren’t many resources you could go to. Although, slowly but surely I never really realized the biggest resource in life was right in front of me; my friends. I was always so reluctant t to ask my friends for advice and help. I felt as if I was a bother or annoying them. I should be able to learn all these skills on my own without them. That though, was such a toxic mentality I gave myself. It wasn’t until years down the line did I learn to take help from others and ask them how they proceeded with a particular project. Now, I’ve learned double if not triple as much then I knew before because of them. I am very lucky to have such a welcoming community that truly wants to help others.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

When going to a convention, I’m always excited to see my friends and the projects they have been working so hard on. Along with that, I get to share mine with them and everyone else who is attending. That alone, is the most rewarding part of what I do. Seeing everyone’s faces light up as you are dressed as one of their favorite characters. Sometimes all someone wants to do, is talk to that character. Although you aren’t actually them, its enough. They get to smile with you, take a picture with you and have a genuine conversations. The smiles all around, the excitement and laughter in the room is truly the best reward I could ever receive from my art.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ElmTheWitch/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElmLockeCos
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@elmlocke?lang=en

Image Credits
Witch Mercy – Overwatch by DarenJamesPhotography KDA All Out Akali – League of Legends by SKN Visuals Arcane Jinx – League of Legends by Marlo.Louden Rey Skywalker – Star Wars by Lily Hall Raven – Teen Titans Black Widow – Marvel by Picturethestreets Bela Dimitrescu – Resident Evil Village by John Coleman